


what we did in the woods

by dryadfiona



Series: glad you’re safe [1]
Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:06:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22223026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dryadfiona/pseuds/dryadfiona
Summary: Sam knows two things. One: her soulmate is someone who was on the mountain a year ago. Two: something is very, very wrong.
Relationships: Ashley Brown/Sam Giddings
Series: glad you’re safe [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1962430
Comments: 14
Kudos: 55





	what we did in the woods

**Author's Note:**

  * For [switchblade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/switchblade/gifts).



> one day i will finish my four daughters of darkness fic that is focused on men facing consequences for their misogyny and on lesbian awakenings and it'll be rad. take this until then though

One year ago, Sam felt panic that wasn't her own for hours and hours. Before that, she'd looked for Hannah, and felt a little like laughing, and felt _furious_ that her soulmate was one of those _jerks._ Maybe it was a coincidence. She doesn't usually believe in coincidences, though.

Anyway, the humor kept rising until she did eventually _actually_ laugh, standing in a hall on the second floor, and she wished she was surprised when she heard someone slam the door.

Sam rushed downstairs to find her friends--though she uses the word _tenuously_ at the moment--waiting outside. Emily says something rude, and Jessica grins before she's finished speaking. Mike looks unbearably smug, Matt looks less smug but is holding a _camera_ , and Ashley's grinning.

Beth runs out after Hannah not long after. The rest of the night, Sam felt her good mood fading and fading and fading. Guilt bubbled up until she felt like locking herself in a closet and sobbing, and she hopes the waves of annoyance are making it through to her soulmate. That's maybe not in the spirit of things, sure, but she's pissed. It's a nice distraction from her own anxiety, from Josh's complete silence, from Chris' hungover raging. 

No one can change what happened later.

* * *

Now, Sam's on a bus and already shivering. Her soulmate must already be there.

Jess thinks she's crazy for not digging deeper. She's convinced Mike is her soulmate, citing mood swings that Sam's fairly certain have nothing to do with Mike and more to do with her tumultuous friend-breakup. Chris, on the other hand, says something about never knowing, about maybe the whole thing being overrated. Josh refuses to say anything at all on the subject. Emily uses it as an opportunity to snipe at Mike, Sam doesn't _talk_ to Mike, and Ashley--

Ashley got quieter, this last year. Sam thinks she might feel well and truly guilty. Still, she doesn't know if _she_ forgives her yet. Josh certainly seems to, nudging Chris towards Ashley. She asks Chris how Ashley is.

"Uh. She seems fine. Why?"

"No reason!" she says, and waits to see if she senses any confusion, jealousy--whatever.

She doesn't, and she doesn't sense any anger when Chris snaps at Josh a minute or so later, which is kind of a relief--she'd hate to disappoint Ashley like that.

 _Not Chris,_ she thinks idly, more relieved that it probably isn't a guy than that it isn't Chris specifically. Besides, it's not like this will matter in an hour or so, right?

* * *

Of course, it does end up mattering. Later that night, even. She's taking a bath, successfully ignoring her friends fucking around with a Ouija board or fucking around because of luggage or just--fucking, in Mike and Jess' case.

She's a little tense, and she doesn't think the tension is her own, which is annoying as hell. Sam's starting to hate this bond. She sends her irritation across the small connection she has, and feels a little regret. The tension dies down slightly, and she relaxes back into the bath, warm and half-dozing.

The tension builds, though, and this time her annoyance is met with just more fear. Sam's almost worried. She hasn't felt this before, not on Halloween with Chris' pranks or a year ago with Hannah and Beth's disappearance. It's something different, something sharper, more tangible. Her breath is faster than it needs to be, and she has to consciously ground herself, focusing on the cold of the porcelain she's leaning against, the unique sensation of headphones in her ears, notes of whatever classical playlist Spotify's made for her.

Relief washes across the bond, sweet, almost cloying, and Sam flushes. She did that for _herself_ not--whoever.

She tries to ignore the bond after that, and mostly manages.

* * *

Sam's back to actual relaxation when she jolts awake, standing in the tub, already shivering where she'd left the water. Her head _hurts_ and the bond is the type of quiet it only is when her soulmate's sleeping (she thinks). But it's not the drowsiness she usually feels then, it's just--nothing, except this headache.

It feels a bit like when she first started climbing, and when she assumed she didn't need the gear, and when she fell--not high enough to break anything, but close. She'd landed on her ass, and cried the whole way home, her mom annoyed, her dad offering advice as though he'd ever done something more active than walking the dogs. It's a sharp ache that quickly gets dull.

Experimentally, she prods the back of her head. It doesn't hurt anymore than poking herself normally would.

Okay. It is a soulmate thing, then.

Sam considers getting up and leaving. The room, the mountain, she's not sure. For now, all she does is get out of the bath and pulling her clothes on, ignoring the uniquely uncomfortable sensation of itchy wool against wet skin, and heads downstairs.

The first thing she finds are these weird balloons with arrows on them. She doesn't know what the _fuck_ is going on, but that seems like a place to start. Pulling her jacket a little tighter around her, she heads downstairs, and into the theater room.

The doors slam behind her, because of course they do. God, she should have watched more of the Washingtons' horror movies.

"You're not supposed to be here yet, Samantha," a loud, slightly digital voice calls out, mocking. "What have _you_ been up to?"

"What? Who are you?" she asks, already trying the doors.

"Wait a bit," it says, and then adds nothing more.

Her bond lights back up as slowly as it does on normal mornings, and Sam is so relieved she could cry. She does a bit, actually, but she thinks that's her--her _whoever_ , and she tries to express concern, worry, _where-are-you._

The bond works in feelings, though, not words, so no dice. Her concern doesn't seem to help whoever it is, who wakes up uncomfortable until she's suddenly frantic, and Sam paces around the theater room looking for a way out. Just for some way out of this frenetic energy, to stop feeling _trapped_.

She thinks that might be both of them. She hopes she's wrong.

Relief and guilt spike out of nowhere, and Sam reels with the intensity of it. Horror follows quickly after, and Sam feels warmth against her side. When she puts her hands on her face and pulls it away to look at it, she half-expects blood.

* * *

The night only gets worse. Sam's soulmate isn't Josh, because she can still feel terror and panic and a weird kind of shyness that isn't her own, and she just watched Josh's intestines fall out like he was fucking _butchered_ , and if she wasn't vegan before, God. She never even wants to _look_ at meat again.

For the first time in years, Sam's relieved that she has a soulmate, because she sees herself standing in the bath, worried, and thinks about what would have happened if she hadn't been worried. If she hadn't been _warned_.

"Why are you doing this?" she asks, unshed tears in her eyes.

"Why are you watching?" the voice says, and she's picturing a leer.

"Shut _up!_ " she says, and throws a vase at the asshole when he walks in.

She manages to shove the other door open, _finally_ , because adrenaline has perks. She runs and runs and nearly turns to grab the bat but decides against it. In the elevator, she barely _breathes_ , flashlight off, sure that at any moment he's going to pop up right behind her, sedate her with that needle, do--something not worth thinking about.

"Fuck!" he says above her, and she hears his heavy footsteps away.

It's only then that she's able to register the worryhorrorworry from her soulmate, and she tries to think about the fact that she's safe now, that she's okay, that she hopes her soulmate is the same.

The quiet in her mind after that is almost unwelcome, and she wonders why her soulmate's shutting her out.

* * *

Sam investigates. She finds a bunch of Josh's things that she wishes surprised her, texts to his therapist, a picture of Ashley with her eyes gouged out. She's unexpectedly furious at that, at all of this, and part of it is panic, and guilt, and the feeling of being watched.

She's trying to focus on her conversation with Mike, with his wide-eyed guilt when he says that Jess is dead, with his anger when she says that there's something going on with Josh, and she thinks she knows what.

"I'm gonna rip his fucking face off," Mike says, pushing past her as soon as she opens the door for him.

They hear a gunshot, and start running.

Ashley and Chris are looking down at a table, but both of them look up after just a second, blinking confusedly at each other. Chris looks confused and relieved and a little panicked, and Ashley--

Ashley's hard to read, but Sam feels gratitude beyond anything she's ever experienced. Besides, her black eye matches the throbbing pain on her face.

Maybe.

Then Josh walks up, and talks like they're playing a game, and Sam asks why he made it so obvious, and Mike hits him with the gun.

* * *

"Ashley," Sam says, "are you okay?"

"I can't--talk about that right now," Ashley says, and the hint of panic Sam's been feeling all night spikes up, briefly. "About any of this, I just--there's so much--"

"I get it," Sam says, trying to keep down the disappointment before Ashley notices it. "After?"

"After," Ashley says, and Sam wishes she couldn't tell that they both think they're not making it that far.

* * *

Chris gets ripped apart by one of those things before he gets to the door. Ashley sobs at it, says it should have been her, says he was going to die for her, that even if they weren't soulmates he was her _friend_.

Emily's mostly just rocking back and forth, hand on her shoulder, and Mike sees the bite, and Ashley panics.

"You have to leave," Mike says.

"Are you _fucking_ kidding me?" Emily says, even angrier than she usually is. "You have some fucking nerve, Jess is fucking _dead_ because of you--"

"Because of those _monsters_ ," Mike says, and with the way they're looking at each other now, Sam can't believe they ever thought they were soulmates.

"If she's gonna turn into one of those things--" Ashley says.

"Stop," Sam says, quietly but with enough force that Ashley immediately shuts up, and Mike and Emily at least turn to look at her.

"We don't know how this works," Sam says, speaking calmly to ignore the way her heart's beating too fast against her chest. If she manages to calm Ashley down, that'll go away, anyway. "If she starts changing, she can leave. But until then we're not gonna fucking _kill_ each other, so put your gun away."

Mike looks down at the gun like he'd barely realized he was holding it. "I--"

"Don't," Emily says, tone cold.

Her heartbeat's calmed down, and Sam wants to reach out and run a comforting thumb across the back of Ashley's hand. She doesn't, though. They need to talk about--whatever this means for them. Hopefully before they all die.

Mike reads a map and leaves, because he's an idiot who doesn't wanna wait until there aren't monsters actively hunting them. Ashley reads the guy's journal, and tells Emily that she's okay, and while she's sure the relief she feels washing into her mind isn't Emily's, she can read it on her face.

Emily doesn't yell at or hit Ashley, but then again, Sam had stepped in before Ashley had done something she might have regretted, like calling for Emily to leave or worse, get shot. Sam thinks she might have.

* * *

Sam knows that Ashley's safe, knows that there's no _more_ tension than there has been all night, but when she catches up to them, Sam can't help but grab her hand and smile at her, says "glad you're safe" with more intensity than is really appropriate.

Emily shoves forward, past them, and Sam pretends not to see her wiping at her eyes.

She has to climb up into the mines and find Mike, and ends up hitting the head off a--a monster with a shovel, which Mike seems impressed by, and she's too focused on getting Josh and getting out to care.

They find a watch and a grave and a corpse hanging from meat hooks and Josh. Sam climbs all the way out of the mine, and wades through ice-cold water, praying that the rescue team will come before the hypothermia kills her.

Then she's at the Lodge, and she knows something's wrong before she hears her friends running.

Ashley and Emily run past her, and Ashley _grabs_ Sam's hand, dragging her until her legs catch up to her brain and she's _going_. One monster throws another into the gas line, and Sam nods at Mike, and then everything gets blown to hell.

* * *

Everyone but Chris and Josh got out, is the thing, and she doesn't feel too bad about him. Jess isn't dead, apparently, and Matt's with her, and Emily doesn't seem jealous at the comforting way that Matt's arm is wrapped around her shoulder. Sam isn't surprised at the way that Emily's hand finds the side of Jess's face and just stays there, though Mike, blinking with shock at her side, does.

"Sam," Ashley says, and the black eye looks worse in the light of dawn. It's one of the prettiest things Sam's ever seen, given everything.

"So, uh--"

Ashley kisses her, and Matt woops somewhere in the background, and Emily irritably tells him to shut up. Sam kisses her back, and it's sweeter than anything else that's happened this night (not that that's the highest bar).

"Good talk," Sam says weakly when Ashley pulls back. Ashley smiles back at her.

**Author's Note:**

> edit: fixed a mistake where i said chris died and then forgot that i wrote that! don't write fics at 2am kids


End file.
